


eternity (in definition)

by pathera



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Peter Quill Feels, Stream of Consciousness, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 15:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11187576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pathera/pseuds/pathera
Summary: Peter Quill is offered a glimpse into eternity. It is beautiful right up until it isn't.(Or, a look into Peter Quill's head during the end of Vol. 2)





	eternity (in definition)

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and this is what happens when I have a lot of feelings. I really just wanted to get into Peter's head during the end of the movie, because that boy takes a ride on a rollercoaster through hell and like I said I have a lot of feelings about it. 
> 
> Warnings for GotG 2 spoilers, canon character death, and (sort of) stream of consciousness that may or may not make sense. Also for run-on sentences, good lord the run-on sentences, proceed at your own risk.
> 
> I did play with the exact sequence of events just a tiny bit in the second section, but I'm writing it off as artistic license.

_i._

_Eternity_ , his father offers him, and Peter can see the stars.

(He has always seen the stars. When he had his feet planted on Terra his mother turned his head up towards the sky, she held him close and called him her little star-lord, she murmured about how his father was from the stars, how he was waiting out there somewhere. When Yondu yanked him from that planet, he had given him the stars; Peter grew up among them, pressing his face to the windows and staring out at the wide black, at the endless stretch of the stars and galaxies and planets, and he was never afraid of them, not even when Yondu sat him down and explained in detail all the dangers that space had to offer. The stars are the only sure thing that Peter has ever known that couldn’t be taken away from him.)

Peter thought he had the stars already, as much as a man could, but Ego fills him with light and there is so much more than he ever knew. Universes and centuries, stars spinning and being born and bursting into supernova, galaxies blooming and planets forming, and Ego—no, not just Ego, Peter is right there at his side, there is light connecting them, they _are_ the light—is everything, is everywhere in the universe, _is_ the universe.

It is more beautiful than anything Peter has ever seen, more beautiful than he knew existed in this world.

 _This is wrong,_ a little voice in the back of his head says. (It sounds like Gamora, unsettled by something she can’t name, it sounds like Rocket, suspicious of everything, it sounds like Yondu who taught him not to trust anything in the world.) It is hard to focus, hard to think of anything but the sheer potential, the utter scope of the Expansion, but Peter tries.

He frowns. “My friends,” he says, because there is eternity stretched out in front of him and he sees himself, he sees Ego, but that is all he sees. He sees eons and universes and at the center of it there is still nothing but the two of them.

“Ah,” Ego says, “that’s the mortal in you. You see, Peter, we are beyond such things,” and _no, that’s not right_ that little voice whispers, but it fades to background noise because this is _eternity_. He loves his friends, his team, but this is forevers and perfection and isn’t this what they’re really fighting for, after all? This is power, this is change, this is on a far grander scale than anything else they could ever do or be.

But…”My mother,” Peter says. “You said you loved my mother.”

(His mother was as perfect as a person could be, Peter is surer of that than anything else in the world. It doesn’t matter that he was too young to see or remember her flaws, doesn’t matter that he may have washed her gold in his memories. Meredith Quill was the best person to ever exist, that is the truth that Peter will not ever have shaken from him.)

His father sighs, the sound wistful. “I visited your mother three times. I knew that if I visited a fourth, I would never leave. The Expansion, the reason for my very existence, would be over. So, I did what I had to do.” And Peter can almost understand that, there are stars in his eyes and he is the width and breadth of the universe and it would be a shame to waste this much power, this much potential, to see it all disappear before it even came to be—. “But it broke my heart to put that tumor in her head,” Ego says.

For a moment, Peter cannot breathe. The stars fade and eternity crumbles to nothingness and all Peter can see is his father’s face, all he can say is “What?” through a mouth that does not feel like his own.

(Once, Peter held an infinity stone in his hand and did not die. Once, his mother reached out her hand to him and Peter didn’t take it. Once, Gamora held out her hand and Peter did take it. There are choices you don’t know you have until they happen and there are moments that are not choices at all.)

“I know that sounds bad,” Ego says, placating, but Peter doesn’t listen. No more chances, no more words, no more choices that are not choices, there is only a promised eternity that he will make sure _never_ happens.

Peter raises his guns and fires.

 

_ii._

Eternity, Peter understands, is pain. It is the light spearing him through the chest and holding him in place; he _is_ the light, he can feel it coursing through him, sluggish in his veins, draining out of him. It is like being betrayed by an extension of himself, as if one of his hands lifted of its own volition and started to choke the life out of him. He will not die, he knows that, the light will not let him, _Ego_ will not let him, but he will stay here, suspended for as long as an eternity can stretch. Eventually, everything that makes him Peter Quill will fade. That’s what eternity is—the death of everything he loves, the destruction of everything he is.

Around him, his friends are dying.

Ego is the light, Ego is the planet, and Peter is a fraction of him, but that fraction is enough for him to see. Here is Drax sinking into hungry earth, Mantis held over his head as high as his arms will reach, because Drax the Destroyer will be a shield if he can; here is Rocket being encircled by a tentacle of rock and light; here is Gamora and Nebula right beside her, and all their strength is not enough to break the hold the planet has as it locks them into place with crushing force; here is Groot, and he is tiny and fragile because he was once large enough and strong enough to save them all, but now the rock is closing in around him and he cries because he is a _baby_ , they were supposed to _protect_ him; here is Yondu, crumpled under a pile of stone, his head turned towards Peter, saying “I don’t use my head to fly the arrow boy, I use my hear—“ and then he isn’t saying anything at all and that arrow is snapped in half beside him.

(Here is his mother, laid out in the grass beside him, each of them cupping a headphone to their ear and the music connects them, she has never been gone as long as he had the music—

Here is Drax, his hand heavy on Peter’s shoulder and his head tipped back in a guffaw and Peter is laughing so hard his stomach hurts—

Here is Rocket, flying through the sky next to him as they tested out the rocket packs, and they are weightless and there is a look of fierce joy on Rocket’s face—

Here is Gamora, her eyes rapt with wonder as she listens to his music. The colors of Knowhere are spread out behind them and he touches her hand and the space between them is nothing at all—

Here is Yondu, just behind Peter, guiding his hands into the correct position on a gun, adjusting his aim, and his look is proud even if he never says it out loud—)

 _I don’t fly the arrow with my head, boy_ , Yondu’s voice echoes in his head.

Peter clenches his fists. Ego is the light and Ego is the planet and Peter is a fraction of him, but he is a goddamn Guardian of the Galaxy and that fraction will have to be enough.

The light shifts, and he takes command.

Eternity is the space closing between him and Gamora, is the weight of Yondu’s hand on his shoulder, is Groot sitting on his shoulder with his eyes wide as if the world is new and he wasn’t once tall, is Rocket’s sharp tongue and Drax’s belly-deep laugh, is every note of the music his mother ever gave him, is all the stars in the sky and all the people on a thousand planets who are living their lives.

Peter will die before he lets it all be erased.

 

_iii._

Eternity, Peter understands, does not cease to be pain.

It is the smile on Yondu’s face and the way Peter’s hands skid off the space suit that he cannot pry free, it is Yondu’s hands on his face and the way Peter can feel their pressure but not their warmth, it is the achingly long moments that it takes for Yondu to freeze and it is the absolute helplessness. Peter has rarely been helpless—he learned quick among the Ravagers how to use his sharp elbows to his advantage in a fight, how to be quick enough and smart enough and strong enough, how to talk himself out of bad situations and how to shoot his way out of worse ones, and only minutes ago he had the power of a god. None of it does any good now.

The last time Peter was this helpless, he was watching his mother die. Then, he turned his face away. Then, he ran. Now, he clings to Yondu and screams and cries and the outcome is the same.

But then again—

eternity

is colors blooming across the black of space, a hundred Ravager ships gathered to salute a fallen comrade who lived up to his code in the end

is a small device in the palm of his hand and new songs to learn and knowing that Yondu picked it up in a junker shop for no other reason than that it would be important to Peter

is Kraglin’s shout when he sees the colors, because they aren’t forsaken after all, and is Groot moving from person to person and finally settling to sleep against Drax’s shoulder, is the way Drax’s hand dwarfs the toddler as he gently strokes him to sleep, is Mantis’s wide eyes as she stares out at colors that she has never seen, is Rocket’s bowed head and rough indirect apologies that were never necessary because they are never leaving him behind, is the way Gamora takes a breath before she says “it’s just an unspoken thing” and Peter knows, and

(eternity is pain, it’s the hollow in his chest because he killed one father and held another as he died and he knows too well that grief dulls but never goes away and)

eternity is also beauty because there is a ship steady under his feet and his family is all around him and the stars are in the sky.

Peter curls his arm around Gamora’s shoulders and holds her until the colors start to fade.


End file.
